Portugal is a country that many know for its famous cities –
Porto and Lisbon – or for its resort-infested southern coast in the Algarve
region. I had a few days to get to know Portugal by car and what I saw changed
my relationship with the Iberian Peninsula forever. Portugal is an
under-populated, generous, picturesque and affordable Mediterranean paradise.

Day One: The Wild West and wine valleys…

Trás-os-montes. The land behind the hills. The northwest
region of Portugal that connects with Spain and where the great Duoro River
leaks out into Castilla to become the Duero. A land of drought and cacti. A
land of poverty and dusty little towns forgotten by tourism and unknown to the
world. It is also a place of rugged canyonlands and old medieval towns from
where the young have emigrated. At the little hilltop town of Torre de Moncorvo
no English is spoken and smashing up some Spanish I am able to order coffees
and a bun. No smiles. The famous trasmontano hospitality. Not rude. Just
old and rural.

Then over a high pass where vineyards had sprung and the
world fell away to greener pastures. We had entered the Duoro wine valley. A
UNESCO wonderland of steep river-canyon walls tickertaped with vine terraces
covering 41,700 hectares. Away from the motorways tiny roads slinked up into the
heights affording views that painters would drool at. Here and there a Quinta
– estate – would sit primly with a whole tapestry of wine wrapped around it;
bone white amongst the green.

Under nebulous spitting clouds Pinhão – a scruffy village at
the heart of the wine region and on the bend of the river – offered a brief
refuge. Safe from a violent rainstorm I sipped some homemade ‘vinho generoso’
at a local bar where they didn't bother to put the lights on and which had
walls covered in small bottles and panels of keyrings and postcards lining the
doorway. Past walls covered in beautiful duck blue and china white tiles called
azulejos we crept out of the valley, away from its bursting verdancy and
its little roadside markets where old ladies sold cherries from their cars.

Before reaching the last, fast corridor of motorway that
shot to Porto there was time for a brief stop in Amarante – an odd town sunk in
a shallow valley and gracefully straddling the Tâmega River. Visually there
were a few attractive streets but nothing much else until the eye chances upon
the rebuilt medieval São Gonçalo Bridge that jumps high from one bank to
another. On the other side is a striking white monastery with a theatrical
terracotta tiled roof and just set behind it on a little clump of hill, another
small church with bumpy cobbles streets whispering around it.

With the drinks? Port wines that range from warm, sweet and
blackcurrant-coloured Rubies to smoky ochre Tawnies and cold, chip dries and
that are best served at the hillside Taylors winery; the ever so slightly fizzy
and refreshing vinho verde from the northern Minho region; fruity reds
from the Duoro that are best drunk with cooked meats; or fiery homemade aguardente
spirit that sets flame to your chest and lifts you up after dinner…

With the city’s visual appeal? Porto is a town whose beauty
is as postcard-perfect as it is ramshackle. Hugging the Duoro River a staggered
layer of multicoloured tiled walls rise up onto a hillside. Scarlets and pastel
lemons; Wedgwood blues and creams; Cadbury’s browns and bright peaches and
pinks; a Technicolor wall of civilization sitting under orange terracotta.
Viewed from afar, from the Gaia district over the enormous wrought-iron bridge
on the other side of the water, the city seems carved by the eye of a Venetian
artist. Up close the smashed windows, faded paintwork and scarred doors tell
the story of a poor country.

What hasn’t left this area, the Ribeira district,
is the romance. Little alleys snaking away up and around, plump with cobbles,
hide tiny family-run restaurants bursting with seafood and super-chic wine bars
proffering little known cheeses. The waters of the Duoro always feel nearby.
The cathedral looks over everything; a kaleidoscopic explosion of hues and
spires. And over the water, over that giant bridge, a large monastery beams
back, with the Port lodges at its base and little boats, barcos robelos,
bobbing with barrels. Stray cats own the old town and little old ladies in
pinnies dust their doorsteps as the occasional tourist bent on exploring peers
up and down with a lens.

With its variety? Tiring of city life – such as that is in
central Porto – the beach is just a short bus ride west. Foz do Duoro. Clean
sands try to find space between a lively coastline studded with boulders and
seaweed. Little bars take advantage of their slots and throw tables and chairs
onto the shore. A stubby lighthouse stands proudly at the end of a pier covered
with fisherman catching sea bass as the Atlantic pummels the city for all its
worth. Little old trams occasionally float past and tiny fishing boats covered
in gulls turn slowly in the estuary while churches and forts draw the eye.

Where to begin with Porto? Where to end?

Day Three: Universities and Monasteries…

The drive down to Sintra warrants as many stops as could
fill an entire holiday. To choose but two is heartbreaking. But the call of
that southern fairytale town meant we couldn’t bear to arrive too late.

Through a landscape reminiscent of a sun-soaked Galicia –
furry hills covered in eucalyptus forests and more green than you knew existed
– we arrived at Coimbra: Portugal’s answer to Oxford. A hill on a river in the
coastal Beira region. A dense web of attractive but impoverished streets
covered in graffiti produced a charismatic hub of lanes that would be horrible
for the elderly or invalid. At the peak of this steep warren of cafes and
religious buildings sits one of the oldest universities in the world, and the
oldest in Portugal. The nobility of its scholastic centre is matched by the
beauty of the buildings themselves. Bright cream coloured and bedecked with
turrets and flags, the main university building sits like a fort on the summit
of the hill. Students walk around in long cloaks while red-faced visitors snap
away. Back in town a local festival is taking place. Coimbrans in local dress
play guitars and drums, sing folk songs and sell traditional pastries. It is a
busy and buzzing place.

Deep into the Estremadura region we reach Tomar, a pleasant
village surrounded by a horseshoe of gentle peaks, upon one of which sits an
enormous monastery-fortress once owned by the Templars. The Convent of Christ
could be central Portugal’s Alhambra. It is a silly and overblown complex of
churches, cloisters, spiral staircases, stuccowork and gardens all surrounded
by a crenellated wall. Other giant UNESCO-listed monuments were nearby –
Batalha, Alcobaça – but the call of Sintra snagged us and so we once again
joined the empty motorways and headed south towards Lisbon.

Day Four: Medieval Fairytales…

Sintra spread over an afternoon and a morning and included a
night. It was…like nowhere else I had ever been. The closest thing resembling
it is the mad but brilliant lunacy of Portmeirion. The only difference being
that that eccentric Welsh resort was designed by one man trying to create a
Portofino in Britain, whereas Sintra is the result of a history of
one-upmanship by a cadre of wealthy Portuguese.

Sintra is a frilly selection of absurd by undeniably
beautiful palaces and mansions rising up from the cutesy town to pepper the
small and singular mountain range that sits immediately next-door. All manner
of styles and colours are present, so trying to describe the place is futile.
Standing guard over the town are two very different buildings that top two
neighbouring peaks of the Serra do Sintra. One is the fine remnant of an old
Moorish castle and the other is the over the top Pena Palace.

The Moorish castle is low walled and looks like it has been
drawn by a child. The views it commands are wide-reaching – the sea, the
villages, the fields, the mountain range. Everything is visible. The Pena
Palace is a ridiculous and gargantuan mish-mash of different styles all
comprising one large complex perched precariously on one of the highest points
of the range. A yellow, red, grey, mustard and cream hodgepodge of Neo-Gothic,
Neo-Manueline, Neo-Islamic and Neo-Renaissance styles all clumped together in
the 19th century. It is a wonderful sight.

Before being swallowed up by Spain there is time left of a
day to visit the large sandy arms of beach that hug the Atlantic coast near
Sintra before hitting the motorway again to stop in Evora – the jewel of the
Alentejo region. Sheltered by a large medieval wall Evora is a yellow and white
town of a homogenous beauty that wouldn’t look out of place in Andalucia.

A settlement of grand churches, isolated cobbled streets, an
abbey with a cave of bones, of hearty roasted meat dishes served with heavy red
wines, of Roman temples and of panoramas disappearing off to rumbling plains
speckled by farmsteads. The old city is hot and sits reflective under a
powerful blue sky. The asymmetrical cathedral looks like an old thin cat that
lives in a town famous but retiring calmly in its old age. Evora: a place to
write a poem with a glass of something red and then move on to headier climes.

Portugal showed itself to me and left me wanting more. The
Algarve, the forgotten villages of the inland Beira region, those great old
cities of northern Minho, the canals of Aveiro and the castle of Obidos. So
much more to see. And of course there is always the sensual pull of Porto or
the thrill of Lisbon to invite me back. Portugal: the close friend who you knew
nothing about.